Monday, April 02, 2012

While our intrepid research team has been diligently working on various Data Highlights and Eco-Economy Indicators (more on the way, so stay tuned!), and while Lester has been immersed in working on his books (spoiler alert!) one on the global food situation, another on the energy situation, and the other his autobiography, the rest of us have been making some changes.

One that we hope you will especially like is a mobile website. Our Web Communications Coordinator, Kristina Taylor, took the lead on this initiative, putting in a lot of research and thought on how best to get our research onto mobile devices. She designed the initial pages, which were passed on to the tech and design specialists at Provoc. Provoc is also the organization that redesigned our website a few years ago.

We are now moving rapidly on completing the mobile website, which should be live in a few weeks. We’ll keep you posted!

The other change is two-fold and will be mostly invisible. When you order a book from us, it is processed by our in-house “team” of Millicent Johnson. However, the foundation of our in-house publications database started crumbling and so we began looking for an alternative, which is close to completion.

In the meantime, Kristina and Millicent teamed up to look for a new shopping cart solution, which also now is nearing completion.

As for me, I have been delving into dusty files from 30, 40 and 50 years ago to glean information that Lester can incorporate into his autobiography. One of the treasures has been his report cards! He loved to read and would rush through his homework so he could devour yet another library book. His enthusiasm sometimes resulted in homework errors. Another fun item was finding the sari he brought back from his time in India as an IFYE (International Farm Youth Exchange) in 1956. When he gave his talks on life in the villages of India, he would demonstrate how to wrap a sari, which is how he met his wife, Shirley.